In a “belt-leaves-belt” failure, particularly involving a steel-belted radial tire, the adjacent belts in the tire separate from each other. These tire failures may occur from a variety of problems, but regardless of the problem, it is essential that a tire manufacturer be able to effectively test tires to predict such failures.
The BLB failure appears to be exemplified by a premature aging or oxidation, so it may be predicted by accelerating the aging process, by exposing the tire to increased temperature or oxygen partial pressure while exposing the tire to a dynamic vibratory input that dynamically activates the process of thermal and oxidative aging simulating dynamic road conditions.
In some of the known prior art methods, a series of complete tires are tested at differing time, temperature and oxygen pressure schemes. An inherent difficulty with this methodology is that variations in the individual tires used confounds the testing methodology, resulting in unacceptable data scatter. This data scatter can be eliminated only by exposing the same tire to the differing test conditions, but this is also confounded by the destructive nature of the testing.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method and device wherein each single complete tire can be used to provide a series of data points, such that individual tire-to-tire variation may be demonstrated by comparing the sets of data points generated by the given individual tires.